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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Amazon KDP Select Lives - Part 2

Hello all. Thanks for stopping at Self-Publishing Central.

This post will give an update to my post from last week's discussion of why I believe the Amazon KDP Select program is still a viable way to get exposure, and sales, for your book.

Summary of giveaway results.

Over a period of three and a half days, using KDP's Free Promo option, I was able to give away more than 34,000 Kindle copies of THE 19TH ELEMENT. The vast majority were picked up by readers in the U.S. But there were over 600 books given away in Europe as well. While the book was free, it reached a Free Kindle Ranking of No. 13 overall and No.1 in Suspense and Thriller categories.

I decided to end what had been scheduled to be a five day free period when the pace of downloads slowed a bit at the end of day four. So the book was free for about three and a half days.

Paid results so far.

The results for book sales in the paid column have been great so far. As I mentioned in the earlier post, it was not possible to approach the Top 100 on Paid Kindle due to Amazon's new algorithms. But so far, the book has reached as high as No. 306 in Paid Kindle Rankings on the third day after ending the free promo. Since then, it has hovered between about No. 400 and No. 450 in the overall Paid Kindle Rankings. It is presently at No. 415 as I write this blog on day seven after the free promo.

In the Paid Kindle Suspense category, the book has ranked as high as No. 26 and is presently ranked at No. 36. That's Top 100 in a very competitive Kindle category for nearly a week now!

To this point, THE 19TH ELEMENT has sold over 550 copies at $6.99. I has also seen Amazon Prime Borrows of more than 850. And remember...we're only in the middle of day seven in the paid column.

Conclusion.

Although the "new" free promo didn't yield the classic "three day bump" such promos once provided back in January and February, my book is still solidly in the Top 100 in its category (No. 36) and sales and Borrows remain strong on day seven paid.

As an extra bonus, the other three books in the series have seen approximately a doubling in sales beginning during the free period and continuing today. That's an extra 150 or so additional sales, also at $6.99.

Those are my results. You decide. Is KDP still worth it for you? It is for me.

3 comments:

Interesting and impressive results; thanks for sharing. I'm running a 5 day giveaway starting July 18th for my fantasy adventure, EON'S DOOR. I already have some excellent reviews from critics and readers on Amazon but I'm hoping for a bump in sales. If I can have a fraction of your success, I'd be happy. My goal is 5000 downloads but I'd love to see many more.